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Talk:Ross Garrison
Was Garrison One of the Seven? I've been trying to track down some information to establish whether Garrison was one of the "original seven" who knew about the machine. Currently, there's a note on Garrison's page stating that he was not one of the original seven in light of his testimony in the kangaroo court ("Deus Ex Machina"), where he said "I had nothing to do with the development of Northern Lights. Damn thing was up and running when I was read in". This is broadly corroborated by Greer's conversation with Garrision in "Death Benefit", where Greer asserts that Garrison was tapped to shepherd the Northern Lights program in 2008 -- long after Nathan Ingram signed the contract with the government on February 25, 2005. However, in spite of his late arrival, I think Garrison probably qualifies as one of the "original seven". In fact, the word "original" may be a misnomer. As I recall, the only time when the seven are specifically mentioned is a flashback in "No Good Deed" (S1E22 at around 17:15). Nathan meets Alicia Corwin at a bar in 2009 to discuss final arrangements for transporting the Machine. Nathan slips in his speech and says eight people know about the machine (inadvertently including Finch as the eighth person). Alicia immediately corrects him and says there are seven. Since this conversation happened in 2009 (after Garrison was tapped for Northern Lights in 2008), Garrison must have been one of the seven Alicia was talking about. It's a bit of a misnomer to talk about the "original" seven, since the conversation only reveals the number of people who knew about the machine at the time it was transported to Washington state. My argument doesn't contradict Garrison's statement at the trial. The Machine was running between 2005 and 2008, generating relevant numbers while Finch continued to enhance its code. The government program known as "Northern Lights" seems to refer to the entire mission surrounding the Machine. It also includes ISA operations to neutralize terrorist threats. Those operations were likely happening, in light of Finch's testimony at the trial, where he says that the machine helped stop 54 terrorist attacks by the time it was transported in 2009. Therefore, Northern Lights was indeed operational before Garrison learned about it in 2008. SmokyBirch (talk) 06:21, May 26, 2014 (UTC) : You make an interesting point. I've reverted your edit for now, so we can allow time for discussion, and avoid a revert war. I'm incline to agree with you. I can't recall where the "original seven" distinction came from; there was the conversation you mention, but I think the label was born here. I hadn't considered the timeline, but given what you've laid out, I think you may be right. There's no rush -- let's give a few more regulars a chance to weigh in so we have some solid agreement, then make the change. Meanwhile, keep doing the great work you're doing. --LeverageGuru (talk) 05:14, June 2, 2014 (UTC) ::The label most likely came from here because people found it reasonable that he must have been one of the original seven given his connections to Control and the yellow box he had the first time he was on screen. Fact is, we don't know anything other than what Garrison stated at the trial, namely that he had only been informed about the Machine after it had been reassembled. Whether he lied to get himself off the hook, or he actually told the truth, the only fact that should be included in his article is that he has a yellow box and what he said at the trial, without speculating what it could mean, or not. ~~ Helloclaire (talk) 06:32, June 2, 2014 (UTC) :::What about Greer's comments in "Death Benefit"? I agree that Garrison's statement at the trial is not reliable on its own (he was under duress), but Greer's comments about Garrison being tapped for Northern Lights in 2008 are credible in my opinion. He successfully broke down Garrison's denial and smokescreen techniques by citing that single example. Greer has repeatedly demonstrated unexpected knowledge of facts about people he's dealing with (Reese and Shaw in "Zero Day" and Root in "Allegiance"). Furthermore, Greer's statements do not conflict with Garrison's testimony. SmokyBirch (talk) 07:52, June 2, 2014 (UTC)\ ::::That's right but it's still no proof that Garrison was one of the original seven. I think the question here is whether Garrison was one of them or not and that's the question we can't answer. Greer's comment may indicate that Garrison lied at the trial and indeed knew about the Machine before it was shipped, which was in 2009. We can add everything we know about Garrison and his connections to the Machine but not as proof that he is one of the original seven. ~~ Helloclaire (talk) 08:18, June 2, 2014 (UTC) :::::I think that's a reasonable solution. I believe we might be talking past each other, though. Just to clarify a few points: When you refer to the original seven, you are talking about the seven people mentioned by Alicia in "No Good Deed", right? Those people knew about the machine right before it was shipped from IFT. As far as I know, we have never known for sure how many people knew about the machine in its early stages. Also, why would Greer's comment imply that Garrison lied at the trial? Garrison said that Northern Lights was already up and running when he learned about it. The government signed the contract for the machine in 2005 and acted on its intelligence ever since. So the Northern Lights program was certainly running before 2008. I don't see any contradiction between Garrison's trial testimony and Greer's statement in "Death Benefit". SmokyBirch (talk) 09:00, June 2, 2014 (UTC) "Original Seven" here refers to the seven people mentioned by Alicia Corwin in . Ingram said "Eight people in the world know it exists. We need to keep it that way." Corwin corrects it to "seven" but I think she made it very clear that there are only those seven people who have known about the Machine by the time it was shipped. In the 2007 flashback in , Finch says that "there are exactly eight people in the world that know that this thing exists." Given that Corwin basically confirms it two years later adds more proof that there are really only seven people (+Finch) who knew about the Machine from the day it was commissioned until it was shipped. Garrison could have been one of them but as long as there is no die hard proof that he was among the original seven, we'd better treat him as one of those who learnt about the Machine at an unspecified point in time. If he was only tapped to shepherd the program in 2008, he couldn't have been included in the original seven mentioned by Finch in 2007. He could have been assigned to the program without knowing what it is and where the intel comes from, as long as the Machine was still at IFT and the Government didn't have physical access to it. There's plenty of if's and maybe's and who those original seven people were has been a mystery ever since Corwin said it. ~~ Helloclaire (talk) 05:59, June 3, 2014 (UTC) : Oh, I forgot that Finch talked about eight people in that flashback from "Ghosts". Thank you for pointing that out. That leaves us with a real conundrum. There were seven people (+Finch) who knew about the machine in 2007 and seven people who were aware of it in 2009. Garrison was "tapped to shepherd the program" in 2008, according to Greer. I can think of three possible ways to explain these facts: The first, and perhaps most plausible, is what you outlined above. Garrison learned about the Northern Lights program in 2008, but he didn't know the source of the intelligence until after 2009. Given the government's extreme secrecy about the Machine, this seems somewhat reasonable. On the other hand, the word "shepherd" suggests someone in charge. How could the "shepherd" of Northern Lights be unaware of its most important resource (the Machine)? : The second possibility is that there was a different person "shepherding" the program between 2005 (or earlier) and 2008, but that person either died of natural causes or was killed. In 2008, Garrison took the first person's place, and as a result, there were still a total of seven people who knew about the machine in 2009. I would say this is equally plausible compared with the first option. The government was determined to keep the machine secret. Maybe the first "shepherd" was about to reveal the machine to the press (similar to Nathan Ingram) and was killed. : The third option (and the least likely, in my opinion) is that Greer lied about Garrison being tapped for Northern Lights in 2008. Given the context of the conversation and Greer's previous track record, I think he was probably accurate. : In any event, that statement from Finch in 2007 introduces enough uncertainty so that we can't definitively say whether Garrison was one of the seven mentioned by Corwin in 2009. I agree that we should stick with known facts and avoid speculating on this for Garrison's character page. I'll attempt to revise the note to acheive that goal in the next few days. SmokyBirch (talk) 00:08, June 7, 2014 (UTC)